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YouTube’s LGBTQ Problem Is a Business-Model Problem
- vorticalbox 7y agoHappens to all creators equaly because that's how the algorithm works.
- danharaj 7y agoYou typed this out and decided it was a constructive take. How is that?
- sascha_sl 7y agoAh, so that's why Crowder only got demonetized after the big controversy and LGBTQ people had this issue... essentially forever?
- monocasa 7y agoIt doesn't. LGBTQ is a category that gets special cased in order to block homophobic creators. But it mainly just blocks pro-LGBTQ creators because the homophobic creators are more likely to speak in dog whistles that the blocking algorithms don't understand, whereas the pro-LGBTQ creators speak frankly and quote homophobic speech in order to comment on it.
- mushufasa 7y agoIf this is the case, that's tragic in the dramatic sense -- LGBT groups fighting algorithms that are protecting them, because they can't appreciate the unseen danger prevented. I also imagine the 'algorithms' are a moving target, which makes me think this should be settled quickly if not dismissed, as Google tries to correct this. But certainly a lawsuit should bump this up the engineering priority list.
- vorticalbox 7y agoI hope that is a the case of it being sorted quickly though I am unsure they can teach intent well enough to actually make this any better.
- jakelazaroff 7y ago> If this is the case, that's tragic in the dramatic sense -- LGBT groups fighting algorithms that are protecting them, because they can't appreciate the unseen danger prevented. I don't think the article or GP are saying this. The algorithms, while ostensibly well-intentioned, are actually having the opposite effect — stifling the speech of the LGBTQ+ community while allowing their harassers to operate mostly unchecked.
- mushufasa 7y agoIf they block 40% of real hate speech but also 5% of false positives (lgbt commenting on hate speech) I would say the algorithms are working overall. I have no way to know the real numbers but I am assuming Google monitors overall effectiveness of algorithms and only use what works.
- monocasa 7y agoIf they're having trouble classifying, they might not have good data on effectiveness.
- mushufasa 7y agoYou would have human review of a random sample to test effectiveness. In fact, this is usually how the ML algorithms are constructed in the first place, e.g. supervised learning. So yes I think they should have this.
- jakelazaroff 7y agoOkay, but why do you think the numbers look anything like that? Conversely, if they block 5% of hate speech but are 40% false positives, then the algorithms are clearly not working. We have no reason to assume they're effective, and in fact this lawsuit contends that they're actually harmful.
- 9HZZRfNlpR 7y agoA lot of these suers are just making videos of sex toys[1] and other stuff that is very well known to be sensitive stuff despite the irony of all pop culture being about sex. This lawsuit has nothing to stand on, even people making videos of electronics get striked, harassed, deplatformed. They just assume it's because of lgbt, but it's standard YouTube. https://youtu.be/0rjrA2GJ1lo https://youtu.be/0rjrA2GJ1lo
- wyoh 7y agoLGBT creators are not a special case, all news and politics commentators I follow are demonetized, all gun related channels as well.
- pjc50 7y agoThat's probably a sign that you're being radicalised and should find some saner news and politics commentators.
- wtdata 7y agoDo you apply the same logic to LGBT content that is complaining about getting demonetized?
- wyoh 7y agoThey're demonetized all across the political spectrum. Be it right wing like Crowder or left-wing like Tim Pool.
- pjc50 7y agoDoesn't sound like Tim Pool is really all that left wing: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Tim_Pool#Clickbait_content https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Tim_Pool#Clickbait_content
- Karunamon 7y agoThat is a rather disgusting accusation to make, and one that eimultaneously indicates a political bias and presumes that automated moderation decisions are always correct.
- krapp 7y ago> Happens to all creators equaly because that's how the algorithm works. The entire premise of the article is that the opposite is true.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y agoOne of the big problems with machine learning algorithms at this time is that they have a hard time figuring out intent. A lot of the terms used by the LGBTQ community, have been used by homophobic people as slurs. Yes it is great that the community is reclaiming those words, but current ML tech has no way of distinguishing when those terms are being used by the community in a respectful manner from where they are used by homophobic people to promote hate. This is also the case with African Americans, and there is a similar problem of machine learning flagging African American content as hate speech. https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/8/15/20806384/social-media-hate-speech-bias-black-african-american-facebook-twitter https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/8/15/20806384/social-media-h... The problem may be that we cannot depend on machine learning algorithms to do an acceptable job of moderation, and that a lot more humans need to be hired as moderates. However, doing that really changes the economics of the platform
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mushufasa 7y agoWhat about crowdsourcing efforts? Why are user flags insufficient? Why can't there be a balance between full automation and human review, such as an appeal system or 'whitelist' program? Are the economics really the obstacle, or is it more of a corporate stance towards not adjudicating subjective controversies to avoid liability under the Communications Decency Act Section 230?
- lordCarbonFiber 7y agoThe problem with crowd sourcing, especially in the LGBT space, is it's really vulnerable to brigading. Give particularly bored and hatful people a bat to shut down channels they don't like and things go south fast.
- prometheus76 7y agoYeah, it's a good thing those brigading actions never go the other way, though, right? That would be wrong and immature and just plain hypocritical...Sure glad it never happens!
- Animats 7y agoArguing that there's a right to get ad revenue from your videos is a big stretch. Has that ever come up before in the history of free speech? Classic issues are more like "can we make the newspaper run our ad if we pay the regular rates?" Google recently won a lawsuit which complained YouTube was putting conservative content in "restricted" mode.[1] Others complain Google is not doing enough to avoid shoving too many extreme videos at people.[2] [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-google-youtube-censorship/google-defeats-lawsuit-claiming-youtube-censors-conservatives-idUSKBN1H320D https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-google-youtube-c... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/11/world/americas/youtube-brazil.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/11/world/americas/youtube-br...
- ppseafield 7y agoIt's not just about "not getting ad revenue". It's about accounts getting suspended, homophobic ads running on pro-lgbt videos, and a total lack of enforcement on their harassment policies. https://twitter.com/gaywonk/status/1134264395717103617?lang=en https://twitter.com/gaywonk/status/1134264395717103617?lang=...
- wyoh 7y agoI don't think it's a good idea to quote this asshole when the fuss he's made with his (former) employer resulted in the de monetization of thousands of channels, not only Crowder.
- CapricornNoble 7y ago"homophobic ads running on pro-lgbt videos" There are homophobic ads on YT? What does that even look like? Can you link to an example?
- Mirioron 7y agoThe thing is that a lot of us saw this coming. Whenever people complain about how YouTube needs to remove X type of content, they also need to realize that if YouTube actually starts policing that type of content then there will be false positives. Since YouTube will do it algorithmically, the chance that there will be collateral damage is much higher and YouTube takes a long time to reverse decisions they've already made. For example, YouTube doesn't want violent content. Just having the word "kill" in your title can get the content demonetized, even if the content is about a video game and properly categorized as such. It's been this way for years.
- jakelazaroff 7y agoThe point is that they shouldn't do it algorithmically. They need to have guidelines for what type of content is acceptable, and hire people to enforce them.
- monocasa 7y agoOr both. Have a scanner, but also have a meaningful appeals process, and you don't have a demonitized gap just because you were falsely flagged.
- topmonk 7y agoHow can you not have a demonitized gap? Advertisers aren't going to want to have they ads on content that hasn't been vetted.
- Mirioron 7y agoThen the costs of YouTube probably balloon so high that it doesn't matter for creators whether their videos are demonetized or not, because they aren't going to earn anything from them.
- Fomite 7y agoWe may be hitting the point where societal impact is great enough that people don't necessarily accept "We can't do that at scale" as an out.
- fareesh 7y agoWhat if monetized videos can't be viewed without spending "ad bucks"? To earn "ad bucks", you have to watch an ad. The ad watching takes place in a dedicated ads section of the site, completely independent of all videos. The vast majority of monetized videos would cost 1 ad buck, so watch one ad. The ad watching is just a giant "watch ad" button. The algorithm goes through all all the info about me and shows me a relevant ad, just like it does already. If you want to opt out of ad bucks, you can just subscribe to that channel and pay some money. YouTube takes some, the creator gets the rest. Why not just use this model instead of this politically driven sham that currently exists? I'm the viewer, I'm the product. My attention has value - so why not let me to worry about what videos I want to support and leave the corporations out of it? YouTube is nothing without the viewer. If YouTube is a platform and not a publisher, then they should act like the phone company. If I want to call some psychic hotline, just connect the call and take your cut.
- zzzcpan 7y agoAds don't convert if people are externally motivated to watch them.
- perl4ever 7y agoIt seems to me that some of the most valuable information for an advertiser would be what kind of ads someone will voluntarily choose to watch. Saying they may not convert is like complaining that you can't eat free money.
- iMage 7y agoIt would be interesting to advertisers put out competing adds and users having the choice to watch them. Potentially some lesser known names could emerge, because larger companies already have recognition and would be less motivated to create voluntary ads.
- umeshunni 7y ago> It seems to me that some of the most valuable information for an advertiser would be what kind of ads someone will voluntarily choose to watch. Advertisers don't care about what ads people want to watch. They care about what ads convert.
- coolblah 7y agoThis problem wouldn't exist if there was no "moderation" (which is censorship) at all.
- rnd0 7y ago4chan tried that; everyone knows how spectacularly that failed.
- swebs 7y agoFailed? It's doing quite well
- tsukurimashou 7y agoThe problem is the same as our current society, some people will never get along, stop trying to put everyone in a single platform
- zzzcpan 7y agoPeople generally can get along, it's just in certain countries there is this state pushed divide and conquer [1] that's been going on for way too long. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule
- rhcom2 7y agoKind of like how police brutality wouldn't exist if there were no police at all?
- tareqak 7y agoHere is a graph of how this thread trended: http://hnrankings.info/20709563/ http://hnrankings.info/20709563/ .
- username90 7y agoWhy would it do that? Did some moderator intervene?
- pjc50 7y agoIronically, it's an opaque algorithm. (Moderators will often, but not always, say if they've rescued a page. It's possible this got aggressively flagged off the front page and was rescued.)
- makomk 7y agoMost likely a moderator intervened to stop it being algorithmically kicked off the front page - we're well over the threshold where the flame war detector normally kicks in and downranks submissions (roughly when it has more replies than upvotes).
- paulnechifor 7y agoHonestly, a moderator should intervene. What's the point of linking to an article where you can only read 3 lines before paying?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pdkl95 7y agos/(algorithmic|human) moderation/a rule of law/g This mess will only get worse as long as Google insists on trying to fix unsolved social conflicts unilaterally. Google made themselves the primary target when they started to make decisions with large social consequences by fiat. They de facto implemented rule of man[1]. The solution is to not be the sole entity with the power to make decisions about unsolved social issues. Relinquish the power to make decisions about what kind of content is "acceptable" by implementing a rule of law managed by some kind of publicly accountable, transparent governance, Google (and anybody else that controls something the public relies upon as infrastructure) has a ch9oice: keep the power to make socially-important decisio9ns and accept the blame and responsibility for those decisions, or abandon that power to make the whole mess someone else's problem. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_man
- tomlockwood 7y ago> The solution is to not be the sole entity with the power to make decisions about unsolved social issues. Relinquish the power to make decisions about what kind of content is "acceptable" by implementing a rule of law managed by some kind of publicly accountable, transparent governance They started making these decisions, because Capitalism. They're publicly traded. Shareholders demand more profits. Advertising is the vast majority of their Youtube profits. Advertisers are risk averse. No fortune 500 company wants their ad running on white supremacist/violent/sexually explicit content. There is collateral damage, but caring about that only marginally increases profit.
- mushufasa 7y agoAll countries already have laws regulating speech to various degrees of freedom. Google's need to comply with these laws is part of the genesis for the moderation (e.g. copyright protection, child pornography). In fact, aggressive government laws for censorship are why Google chooses not to operate in China. The topic at hand is about monetization of ads -- the "acceptability" of the content is determined by the ad buyers. Not some idea of social good -- it's just the market. The problem here is about execution not policy. The plaintiffs argue Google's algorithms are not working as intended, not that their intentions are misguided. Are you suggesting that Google should create additional authority to regulate itself beyond what is legally required and needed for their business? E.g. create some expert panel that can compel Google to censor certain content? That would create more problems than it would solve.
- yektaw 7y agoNo, no it’s not.
- WalterBright 7y agoI remember when it was just seven words you cannot say. Now, it's hundreds. https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/08/15/2058257/advertisers-are-blacklisting-news-stories-that-contain-forbidden-words https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/08/15/2058257/advertisers...
- lukaszkups 7y ago> Specifically, the lawsuit accuses YouTube of filtering, demonetizing, and otherwise limiting videos that deal with LGBTQ identities, making it hard for their creators to reach a wide audience and make money. The suit alleges violations of free-speech protections and civil rights, among other statutes, and seeks class-action status. But the youtube isn't a public institution - it's a private platform - does that apply as well even if they would put e.g. banned topics/words in their terms and conditions document? (I'm just curious)
- icebraining 7y agoThey're making the case that YouTube is a "public forum", which would limit the owner's ability to regulate speech in it. I don't think that claim has much of a leg to stand on, considering the recent Supreme Court decision: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190617/16001942415/supreme-court-signals-loud-clear-that-social-media-sites-are-not-public-forums-that-have-to-allow-all-speech.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190617/16001942415/supre... and a previous decision by a lower court against YouTube itself: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180327/14362539515/court-tosses-dennis-pragers-silly-lawsuit-against-youtube-refuses-his-request-preliminary-injunction.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180327/14362539515/court...
- ejefz 7y agoI'm sure those people don't have a problem with Twitter or Facebook banning conservatives.
- icebraining 7y agoFinally found the actual court submission: https://www.docdroid.net/g7RXXi1/youtube-lgbtq-lawsuit.pdf https://www.docdroid.net/g7RXXi1/youtube-lgbtq-lawsuit.pdf
- plutonorm 7y agoThe root cause of this is a mismatch between capitalism and a well functioning, fair society. Again. The earth is dying, the population polarised and our social systems are failing to do their job. Something has to change. There must be another model out there that doesn't devolve into horror, as both capitalism and communism seem destined to do. We need to revisit the 60's only this time we need an actionable plan and the will to follow through or our children's children aren't going to make it. Don't balk at this, our structural problems are existential.
- cromwellian 7y agoThere's an assumption if you use human raters, you won't have false negatives or positives, but even human beings disagree over how to categorize speech, what's homophobic, what's legitimate sarcasm or irony, what is violent content. In fact, on top of human raters exhibiting classification problems in the face of ambiguity, there is also the issue of bias. Radiolab on NPR had a great series on Facebook's human censors that shows it just opens up a different pandora's box. There is no clear, non-messy way to do censorship that doesn't end up with a sizable number of people mad, and with some subset of people hit by accidental or deliberate false positives. I'm afraid there's no easy answer and it will inherently be constant battle and fight between sides.
- Fnoord 7y agoThe extreme/disgusting outliers (about which we reasonably can agree on) can be caught by an computer. That way, human beings can assess the (arguably) many gray areas.
- ptah 7y agopossibly, they should have LGBTQ humans do the rating on what is homophobic etc
- prometheus76 7y agoNo bias at all. Should work out great.
- mieseratte 7y agoI know LGBTQ people who are free-speech absolutist and others who believe that anything that may offend or otherwise may be used negatively should be censored. I know LGB people who think that the TQ+ should be peeled off and needs to be its own thing. There is no uniformity among LGBTQ, the only commonality is the lack of being hetero.
- paulnechifor 7y agoSounds like a conflict of interest. If someone gets sued for rape, the jury doesn't get filled with rape victims.
- buboard 7y agoPaywall
- tu7001 7y agoIs it a joke? In Poland, for example, Youtube, in wholesale, blocks channels which are criticize on LGBTQUERTY. The question is why the are able to censor content. I don't expect that my supplier turn off gas for me, if he thinks, that I use it to kill people; it's not his business, ot's the matter of law enforcement, the police, etc.
- ChickeNES 7y ago> Is it a joke? No? > In Poland, for example, Youtube, in wholesale, blocks channels which are criticize on LGBTQUERTY. YouTube is US based and hate speech is looked down upon in the US. Don't like it? Find a service not based in the US. > The question is why the are able to censor content. It's a private website, they can do whatever they want. Again, find another site if you want hate content. > I don't expect that my supplier turn off gas for me, if he thinks, that I use it to kill people; it's not his business, ot's the matter of law enforcement, the police, etc. ??? A) if they know you're using it to kill people they would be an accomplice in the eyes of the law B) they would have every right to refuse service
- 12thsie34 7y ago"Hate speech" according to the opinions of an undeserving minority of rich nerds.
- rewq4321 7y ago> In Poland A month ago LGBT people were being punched and kicked in the head and had bricks thrown at them while walking down the street for a parade: https://streamable.com/hflsx https://streamable.com/hflsx "Fuck off, we will kill you, there is no place for you in society" https://streamable.com/f1c7c https://streamable.com/f1c7c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlXWhSE9kAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlXWhSE9kAM You should be ashamed of your country for the way LGBT people get treated.
- bprieto 7y agoAre you really sure you should also be held to that standard? That you should be ashamed by any of the wrong things anyone does in your country?
- wvh 7y agoThis is an example of how censorship can boomerang back into the face of those it tries or claims to protect. I think policing words and topics will have a negative impact in the long run for most situations. Simple AI (or even human censorship) reacts to words and not intent, and ends up actually suppressing the minority.
- Proven 7y agoIt’s not a business model problem it’s a “too many busybodies” problem. YouTube ought to be able to manage their platform any way they want. It doesn’t make sense that someone can sue another person or entity because of the way they manage their own, private property. And such lawsuits are especially hypocritical when they’re initiated by supposedly tolerant people like this particular (I am not generalizing) LGBTQ organization. None of this has anything to do with YouTube or LGBTQ, it’s a simple matter of property rights.
- rdtwo 7y agoTruth is ad buyers don’t want to be associated with any controversial content and a majority of Americans still feel uncomfortable about Gay and lesbian issues and even more uncomfortable about transgender issues. It’s smart for advertisers to exclude lgbt content from their ads if they don’t think that’s a target demographic